Author: Richard Boardman

If you’re implementing a new CRM system and have been talking to potential vendors about how they would approach a project, I suspect the word ‘agile’ features strongly in their presentations. Go back a few short years though and you would have been hard-pressed to hear the word ‘agile’ being Continue Reading

In my recent series on requirements gathering, I noted the need to document the phasing of a CRM implementation. I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that phasing is one of the most critical aspects of implementing a CRM system successfully, and so figured this might merit some further Continue Reading

In a previous post in this series I set out my thoughts on the content and structure of a CRM requirements specification. In this post I want to cover how to go about gathering them. The starting point, if you’re not reasonably familiar with CRM technology, is to do some Continue Reading

Last time out I described what I’d expect to see in a decent CRM requirements specification. Putting this sort of document together isn’t a trivial exercise, but the payback from the time invested can be huge. Here are some of the key benefits of this sort of approach: Increased return Continue Reading

In the fourth of this series of posts about CRM requirements gathering, I wanted to cover content. So what needs to be included in a CRM requirements document? The following covers the main areas I’d hope to see: Approach This section sets out how the requirements were gathered, and, importantly, Continue Reading

I promised in last week’s post that this week I’d set out my views on what should be included in a CRM requirements specification. However, I’m going to put that on hold for a week. I realised there were some points that merit some articulation first. So, to help set Continue Reading

In last week’s post I covered some of the common problems with specifying CRM requirements. In this post I want cover purpose. In other words what are we trying to achieve with a CRM specification. In this respect, I believe there are five key objectives: 1. Identify suitable technologies – Continue Reading

As an independent CRM consultant I get to read a lot of CRM requirements documents, and it seems to be an area that most would-be buyers of CRM technology struggle with – probably because there’s little guidance out there about how to approach the exercise successfully. This would be less Continue Reading

In case you missed them, here’s my 60 second bullet point round-up of the main CRM software stories last quarter: April Salesforce.com take a cue from Amazon’s ‘Mayday’ customer support feature on the Kindle Fire to add a new SOS capability to its Service Cloud which enables customers to be Continue Reading

I’ve been having one of those ‘I’d long known it was important, but I’d forgotten just how important’ moments in recent weeks. One of our clients has recently gone live and, in the absence of a colleague who was away on honeymoon, I found myself providing go-live support which involved Continue Reading